Of course it’s true, I saw it on the internet!

I remember when I was living in Ireland and reading the news I would be able to watch and listen to Irish news, English news and read American news. It was great to get a perspective rather then just one news source. it’s something I will say to anyone today is read alternate news sources so you don’t exist in a news bubble.

What has happened since the 1990’s has been a revolution in social media. What I believe this has done is create a world where we/us are able to exist in a bubble we create and due to a algorithm set up by Google and Facebook we are fed articles and media to prop up the story of belief we are trying to prove to ourselves, whether it’s a fact or not.

So let’s look at say ten years of social media has achieved for us, are we particularly more sociable than we were before we had these things. I would say probably not, it’s true to keep in touch with loved ones is cheaper and easier than it was ten years ago. Is the quality of the social experience better?

I think the worst part of the whole thing is the deviation from facts, the way we no longer use trusted sources for our information. These are for myself trusted sources.

BBC news

RTE news

NPR news

Any Times newspaper

I know there are many more but my point is to read multiple sources to get a better picture. And avoid news posted on social media that is not from a trusted source. And remember opinion pieces are just that, somebodies opinion. What happens when you don’t rely on trusted sources for news?

Anti-vaccinations

Brexit

Alt-Right

Anti immigration

people actually don’t believe in climate change

Trump

I am also wary of local stations after this report on Sinclair came to light!

It’s amazing to me that in the age where we have more knowledge at our fingertips than any time in the history of our planet, that so much crap is shared and believed. The Russians from 2015 started a media campaign to influence the election in the United States. What I wonder about is why did the Russians not only want Trump to beat Hilary Clinton (who was maligned badly by the Russians through Facebook), but they also picked him among the other GOP candidates for President. As a failed business man he couldn’t get credit in the United States so it was Russian banks that financed his business schemes. Which is why the sanctions were not popular to the Trumps. Trump is a conspiracy theorist who can do great damage in the oval office, maybe that was the plan overall, to destroy the united states from the inside.

The us against them is straight out of the fascist playbook, which is also propagated by the algorithms of Facebook and Google so we see only what we want to see be it fact or not. In society today there are points of contention that were not in existence thirty years ago. This is due in part to the internet and outlets like Fox News that has led to the creation of radical views through social media.

Apple has recently opened it’s news app, I am not an Apple fan boy although I use and love their products, I try to keep an open mind to these things. But to create an app which will give us news from real sources is genius and my hope is that they will at some point allow sharing to social media to counter the effect of fake news from Russia and propaganda from Fox News & the Sinclair Group.

I agree—it’s hard to tell true journalism from tabloidism anymore. I like this meme is saw that says this about the job of a journalist: if one person says it’s raining and another person says it’s snowing, it’s not your job to report on both—your job is to look out the window and tell us which one is true.

Thank you, I agree with completely. I see so many misinformed people it makes me very concerned on how to fix it! As my wife will say I am a fixer. But this is a hard one when the propaganda machine is so well organized. I appreciate you reading my blog.